Never Let Me Go
by seastarved
Summary: She remembers a thousand stories, lives lived and unlived. He goes through life feeling like he is missing a part of himself. In a world where they have been torn away from one another, Killian and Emma discover that some things cannot be broken.


_Graphic Here:_ tmblr . co/ZVRwvr1kH2niD

 _Disclaimer:_ I own nothing.

* * *

Some days she is Emma Swan.

Saviour. Mother. Daughter. Lover. Some days she remembers what it is like to hold her son in her arms, his small hands gripping at the fabric of her jacket. She remembers what is like to be held by her father, the weight of his hand on her head a comfort that seeps down to her bones. She remembers what it is like to kiss _him_ , to feel his mouth on her, his arms around her, his voice in her ear, her breath mingled with his.

Some days, locked away in this lonely tower, she remembers how to love.

* * *

He runs his hand along the wood of the railing, rotting in some places, complete missing in others. His every footstep causes the ship to groan in protest, as though asking him to be gentle with her. She is an old thing, barely floating in the water. The head of the statue at the helm is gone, the jagged joint of the neck now growing something green. The floorboards creak, the sheets on the beds are moth eaten, the rooms are cold. Her sails have rips in them and most of the wood that makes her is hollow and falling apart.

She is a broken, battered thing, held together only by the will of the man aboard her.

She is just like him.

(A sailor without a ship, a soldier without a hand, a man without a family)

And one day she will sail again.

* * *

Some days she is the pirate who set out to conquer the world but lost everything instead. She remembers hurting him, breaking him, making him scream for her.

(She would do anything for it to stop.)

Some days she is the bandit running away from the queen who wants to destroy her. Her mother's face flashes quickly between love and hate, between warmth and burning flames.

Some days she is Princess Emma, beloved of her parents, beloved of the kingdom. She grows up happy and loved and whole. Her heart a healthy beating thing, unbroken, no clumsy bandages holding it together.

Voices, memories, lives swirl around in her head in an ever growing storm, drowning out every thought, every attempt to understand which story was really hers.

So, she screams.

It quiets the voices, if only for a little while.

* * *

The harsh clanging of their swords echoes in the hall. He dodges and parries every blow, holding the man's sword in his hook, pushing him backwards, away from himself. He moves fast, ducking out of the way of a wide sweep of edged steel and manages to hit the man in the stomach with the hilt of his blade.

He cannot understand why he can't bring himself to hurt the man. He is only a guard. A favourite of the queen he had come to steal from, a formidable opponent but a guard nonetheless.

And yet, he fights only to disarm, to temporarily injure, not to kill.

He stares at the man for long after he has gone still, unconscious. He finds a familiarity there and it beats in his heart like a forgotten song. He takes one last look at the fallen guard, his sword still in his hand, his arms and legs splayed, the light of the lamp above them lighting his hair in a halo.

He looks like a fallen king.

* * *

Some days the magic is wild. It is hungry and wanting, sparks at her fingertips and blood in her eyes. It hurts her to keep it inside, like it is ripping her apart at the seams.

The days when she cannot remember the little brown eyes that had stared up at her from the tiny bundle in her arms, when she cannot remember the blue eyes filled with love and awe and concern, she lets go of her restraint and allows it to escape.

It burns her. Her screams are louder then, shrill and blood curdling. She screams her despair and her hurt. She screams until the magic has ignited every fire in the room, until every piece of glass lies in a million pieces on the floor, sparkling in the light of the blaze.

But today, it is worse. Today, it is manic. It crawls out of her, frantically reaching for something that isn't there. It pulls her body in a crazed dance, her limbs jerking this way and that. Pulling, pulling, pulling until she lets it take control and falls to the floor in a heap of fabric.

Her eyes close as the magic calms just long enough for her to see them.

Those blue, blue eyes.

* * *

He is about to leave with his prize, the one thing that would help him restore his love, his _Jolly_. The clear liquid in the little bottle sloshes from side to side. Water from Lake Nostos. The one thing that could bring the magic back.

He is about to leave, his mind consumed with thoughts of the open sea and the salty air.

He is about to leave when he hears her.

Her voice pulls at him, his legs moving as though without his permission. He ascends the staircase that leads up to the tower, his eyes wide, his feet quick. He reaches the top and is met by two very surprised, very tired guards.

They stare at him for a second, confused by the frazzled man staring at them, his hair untamed and his eyes darting behind them at the great wooden doors that held the queen's greatest prisoner.

Her daughter.

* * *

The magic inside her calms, the storm falling apart, the mist clearing. She stays on her knees, her eyes still closed, her breath coming in short, sharp pants. She stays on her knees and tries to hold on to the rapidly disappearing image of his eyes.

The candles around her go out, leaving her shrouded in blue and white, her sinister shadows curving into soft light.

"Killian."

It is a whisper in the darkness.

It is the calm before the storm.

* * *

He is running. He is running so fast that his every breath stabs at his throat. The floor shakes beneath his feet, the metal of the sconces lining the walls jingling as they vibrate. The guards he had come face to face with had soon been knocked out by the great doors slamming open on their heads. He had stood there then, perhaps not the best course of action when faced with a blinding, crackling brightness. He had stood there mesmerised until he too had been pushed back, forced to kneel in the face of the power.

He had scrambled to his feet and torn his eyes away from the silhouette hidden behind the light. A woman perhaps? A goddess? A witch?

He does not wait to find out.

As he leaves, never looking back, he swears he hears a voice whispering his name.

* * *

Sometimes she remembers but mostly she forgets.

She is on the run from the Evil Queen, the woman who had once been her mother. The woman who had promised to protect her. Perhaps that had been another life but when she hears the voice in her head and feels the warmth in her chest, she is convinced that _she_ is the truth. The soft, gentle phantom from her dreams, not the harsh lines and burning flames of the woman who imprisoned her.

She travels with another woman, a bandit she had met right after she had fled her prison. She has her own sorrows, her eyes are clouded with them but Emma begins to trust her. Not enough to let her see her magic, let her see how it was eating at her from the inside out. But, she trusts her all the same.

And she envies her.

Even though Regina often wakes in the middle of the night with a strange name upon a her lips, she sleeps soundly enough.

Her mind walks a single path while Emma's wanders meandering trails, taking her on journeys through memories that seem like the are from a thousand different lives. When she wakes, the memories, the stories, the people dissolve and she is alone once more.

No blue eyes to make her feel safe, no soft brown hair to protect, no one to love.

* * *

He is running again, making his way across the large forest that surrounds the kingdom. He is on foot and it is slow going. He is a man of the sea, the waves and spray his home. He feels clumsy here, big and loud and disruptive. But he keeps running, visions of the Jolly sailing towards a sunset, floating in an endless night of stars occupy his every waking thought.

But when sleep comes, she is the one who rules.

He dreams of her every night. She haunts him. The gold of her hair, the rush of her skin.

He dreams of having stayed that night at the castle, waiting for the light to dim, waiting to watch the woman emerge from the glare. He dreams that she comes to him in tears, his heart breaking at the sadness in her face. He dreams that she whispers his name and holds him close. He dreams that her lips chase away all the despair and helplessness that marks his old heart. He dreams that when he is with her, he feels like a righteous man.

He dreams, he dreams.

And sometimes he doesn't want to wake up.

* * *

She doesn't know who this man is. He speaks of honour and good form but his words ring false, seem deceitful somehow. So, when he offers to take her home to her mother, she does the only thing she can think to defend herself.

She attacks.

Her blade clumsily clashes with his sure hand while her mind races. Regina is missing. She had gone away a while ago, looking for water and never returned. Emma begins to panic, the magic she keeps buried deep inside her threatening to burst out of her. She isn't sure if this false knight knows who she is, that she is the daughter a mother locked away out of fear. That she is the little girl who grew up in a room with one window. That she is the young woman who has never seen her father smile at her in pride. That she is the woman who has never danced, never been held, never been loved.

He doesn't know that she has a thousand lives in her head. He doesn't know that she knows who he is at his heart. That he is a coward and a villain. A man who has no business speaking of honour.

So she fights.

A blinding beam of light extends from her palm and winds around her sword. The sound of their duelling blades rings loud and true in the silence of the forest.

* * *

The sound of metal against metal wakes him from his restless slumber. He had dreamt of her again, felt her laughter against his throat, her lips nipping at his skin.

He wakes and it is as though he is still dreaming because he swears that he feels her. Like she is close, like the thread holding them together is stretched taut, pulling him towards her.

He gathers his things in a daze and begins to walk.

His feet take him straight to her.

* * *

She sees him first.

She ducks out from under a particularly nasty swipe of steel and comes face to face with him.

He looks like darkness itself. From the leather of his coat to his hair, he is shrouded in the colour of night, the metal in the place of his left hand glinting menacingly in the sunlight. He would look threatening to her, more a danger than the man she is currently fighting. She quickly turns and parries another blow before turning her gaze back to the man whose eyes seem to burn through her.

When she moves, it induces him into movement too. He draws his own sword and advances on the knight.

"Poor form, mate," he grunts as uses his hook to block a strike from the knight's blade, "attacking a woman in the woods. No matter that she can defend herself quite well."

He smirks at her and gives a little bow, his eyes still burning with a fire that begins to warm her from the inside. The same eyes she has been seeing in her dreams, the same voice that soothes her when she can remember it.

"And who is she to _you,_ that you care so much?"

The knight spits the words out, advancing rapidly, moving to strike against his stomach and it is as though the dam holding her magic in breaks, spilling the unrestrained power contained in her veins into the clearing. The forest glows with the strength of it, white light tumbling from her fingertips in wild tangles around her, growing higher and wider.

The light blinds her until all she can see is the white.

And just like that, it is gone.

She falls to her knees, the voices in her head murmuring in tandem. She cannot make out much but one word comes to her again and again.

 _Killian._

* * *

The knight lies prone and forgotten on the ground, his sword lying a good foot away from his hand, his eyes closed and his cloak spread beneath him like pooling blood.

Killian begins to stumble towards her. He is still unbalanced from the brilliant burst of magic that had knocked out the man lying nearby right as he had been about to slice through Killian's stomach.

She rests on her knees, her hands clapped against her ears as though shutting out a loud noise. Her head is bowed and her fingers tremble. He falls into place beside her. It happens so easily, like he had been doing this every day of his life, like he had been always been waiting for her.

His hand reaches towards hers and with the first touch of his skin against hers, he knows. It is her, the woman from the castle, the woman from his dreams. He cannot explain it, but it feels as though his heart knows hers. Like if he kisses her, if he makes her smile, he will begin to feel whole again.

That if he remembers her, the Jolly will begin to fly.

He gently coaxes her to face him, his hand on her face now, thumb gently tracing her cheekbone.

Her eyes meet his and it is like coming home.

* * *

She leans into his touch, the warmth of him flowing deep, deep, inside. It stills the magic inside her, turning the hurricane into a soft breeze.

She looks into his eyes, the same intense blue that she has been seeing in her dreams. The same crinkling at the edges, the same shine in them from his tears.

"Emma?"

She smiles.

And the voices finally go quiet.


End file.
